Photo: Spider web with morning dew by  Ivicabrlic , courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The children's book Charlotte's Web came to mind this month, as more and more obituaries appeared in my hints, each adding to the web of information which solved mysteries, one tiny bit of information at a time. In that wonderful story, Charlotte has to work hard to create her web, even learning to read and spell in her effort to help the children save their pet pig.  Sometimes I see a family as a jigsaw puzzle , with really oddly shaped pieces, like a puzzle with a few missing bits. But  weaving a web better describes the work : find and snag the image of the obituary or news article, transcribe and link all the people named, then figure out who was NOT named and why. It's also interesting to see what facts are missing, such as previous marriages and divorce. The author of each obit worked as hard as a politician's speechwriter, stressing what they want remembered, while glossing over wh...

AI generated “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act," said Stephen Fry. We humans are active. We do things, changing the world and our future. We move around our world with action verbs.  So why do we describe ourselves and our ancestors as nouns, which are static? When people are asked to describe themselves, they often use roles: mother, father, or profession. While part of the picture, it does not get to the heart of the person. I heard a story on the radio today from a mother describing her son who has died, and it was all about what he DID. He kissed the back of her neck as he left with a friend; she never saw him alive again. Precious and painful.  My favorite obituaries describe actions . I treasure them, because they are a window into the human who lives in the records. Dates, places, names are great, but read this  bit of Peter Cain's: " To this union were born 7 children, all of wh...

Great Blue Heron in the Weeds at a lake in SE Kansas M. L. Haen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons I recently found a legal suit while researching more distant Booth relatives, where some members of the family were suing other relatives. A bit more work found that often the defendants were their own siblings! Transcribing the lists of names was both tedious and disturbing, while thinking what happened? Why were they doing this? While working through the first few transcription drafts, fixing spellings, adding in missing names, and double-checking numerous land descriptions, it reminded me of something similar found years ago. Fortunately there was an email about it to our Groups.io about that earlier case, with a transcription!  Re-reading it was good luck: this notice stated, " the object and general nature of which is to try and determine the ti tle to said land as between the parties, plaintiff and defendan t," whi...

  To celebrate America 250 (our 250th anniversary of independence),  Washington State Genealogical Society  will be posting articles on Revolutionary War ancestors of our members.  If you have a Revolutionary War ancestor, please send the Word document to Charles Hansen, our blog master.  Our secretary, Jill Scott, has already sent in a very interesting article on her distant grandfather who was a Green Mountain Man, a very famous militia. Please share your story with SKCGS as well.  Here is one of my ancestors--Charles Dyer Captain of Rhode Island militia. Gravestone of Charles Dyer, Shaftsbury, Bennington, Vermont Charles was a descendant of several generations of public and military service in the Rhode Island Colony.  He served throughout the war and then settled in Vermont with other family shortly after the war.  He lived a long life, dying at age 92.  He had never applied for a pension, stating that he was well off and other people nee...